Page:Poems Cook.djvu/319

Yet if our table be but spread
With savory cheese and oaten bread,
Be thankful if we're always fed
 As well, the wide world over.

We may prefer Italian notes,
Or choose the melody that floats
About the gay Venetian boats,
 Half wild in our extolling:
But surely music may be found
When some rough, native harp unbound,
Strikes, up, like cherries "round and sound,"
 With English fol-de-rolling.

We may be poor—but then, I guess,
Our trouble with our pomp is less;
For they who wear a russet dress
 Need never fear the rumpling:
And though champagne froth never hums
Between our fingers and our thumbs,
Red apoplexy rarely comes
 To dine with plain stone dumpling.

Then out upon the calf, I say,
Who turns his grumbling head away,
And quarrels with his feed of hay
 Because it is not clover.
Give to me the happy mind,
That will ever seek and find
Something good and something kind
 All the wide world over.

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